


Savage Heart

by dustlines



Category: POKEMON Detective Pikachu (2019), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Collateral Damage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Psychic Bond, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-29 09:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustlines/pseuds/dustlines
Summary: Following the captivity, medical experimentation, and forced loss of bodily autonomy Mewtwo suffered in Ryme City, Ash attempts to find and provide care for his traumatized friend.Takes place during and after the events ofDetective Pikachu, and will explore the events ofMewtwo Strikes Back,Mewtwo Returns, andThe Origin of Mewtwo.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Though this fic is separate from and wholly unaffiliated with theirs, I'd still like to take this opportunity to send a warmly appreciative nod to [appending_fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/), whose amazing, Mewtwo-centric, post- _Detective Pikachu_ story, ["Lost, Finding, Found"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777940) hugely elevated my desire to share my own take on what could happen to Mewtwo after this movie.
> 
> You don't know me, but thank you for providing me with a lovely impetus to write my ideas down, [appending_fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/)!! It means a lot. You're fantastic!

* * *

> **Pokédex, Entry #150: Mewtwo**
> 
> "A Pokémon created by recombining Mew’s genes. It’s said to have the most **savage heart** among Pokémon."
> 
> ~ _Pokemon Black_
> 
> * * *
> 
> "Judgment says more about the labeler than the labeled."

> ~Connor Franta, _A Work in Progress_

* * *

In a motel room near Mt. Silver, Ash has his hand over his mouth as he watches the news coming from Ryme City. On nearly every channel are live broadcasts of Mewtwo hurtling through the sky, their hands and eyes engulfed in a meteoric purple glow and their lips curled back in a leering snarl. They seem to be on a mindless rampage, their long-tailed, feline body whipping through the air like a weaponized bolt of lightning, causing windows all around them to explode in fireworks of broken glass and entire chunks of buildings to collapse in floods of jagged concrete and fire. The city is full of screams.

In complete opposition to everything Ash knows about his friend's hard-earned nature as a pacifist, Mewtwo is using his psychic powers to destroy seemingly everything within immediate reach, the blunt tips of each three-fingered hand swinging around to catastrophically direct psionic energy against anyone and anything that gets in their way. To make matters worse, every other Pokémon the news cameras have been showing in Ryme City is also using their abilities to rain destruction on their surroundings, as though a mass hysteria has compromised them all. Though Ash can only guess, he is pretty sure the purple smog coming out of the parade balloons Mewtwo is tearing through has something to do with that.

A camera's perspective from behind the broken windows of an office building reveals Mewtwo loudly shouting at a small Pikachu that is jumping from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit, and it is this fact that gets Ash to truly start rushing to pack an old, faded green backpack to travel with. He knows Mewtwo is only comfortable when able to directly control the limits of who can hear and even see them, preferring to speak through psychic powers instead of with a physical voice, so the fact that Mewtwo is speaking in a way that can be recorded by technology means that something vital has been stripped from their self-control. There's no way Mewtwo could ever feel safe being this loudly and publicly exposed.

Ash gets a video call on his Pokégear just as he's zipping up his backpack and scampering for the door, Charizard's Pokéball chirping as it expands in his hand, ready to be opened. On the wriststrap it's mounted on, his Pokégear's screen flickers once before showing Misty's face, slightly too close to the camera. Were the screen any bigger, he'd be able to see the light smile lines that have begun to shade the edges of her eyes in the two decades since he first met her. As it is, all he can see is that her orange hair has gotten longer and is now pulled into a hasty, messy side ponytail.

"Ash!" she yells, and the rapidly jolting scenery behind her reveals that wherever she is, she is running, too, "tell me you know what's happening!"

"I've seen it, Misty! I'm on my way to Ryme City now. Maybe I can find a way to help Mewtwo — "

He is interrupted as Pikachu, who is still sitting on the corner of the bed in Ash's motel room, abruptly squeals. When Ash spins around in the open doorway to see what's caused Pikachu's distress, he watches on the still-playing TV as Mewtwo's body — now completely slack and vulnerable, eyes closed, pointed facedown and clearly unconscious — plummets from at least thirty stories above the ground, an unsurvivable height to fall from. Forgetting Misty's visual presence on his wrist and aware the friend he wants to help is about to die before his eyes, Ash clamps both hands over his mouth to smother an involuntary scream.

With only seconds to spare, the broadcast abruptly cuts out to avoid showing the inevitable conclusion of Mewtwo crashing to their death on the sidewalk. As though falling with them, Ash's knees hit the carpeted floor of his motel room, his eyes squeezed shut and still screaming into his palms, which are now both shaking. He didn't see the actual moment of his friend's death, but they must have died — they must have!

It takes a few seconds for the panicked rushing in Ash's ears to recede, replaced by a gasping sound he realizes is his own accelerated breathing, joined by a concerned whuff of hot air as Charizard — who was released when Ash dropped their Pokéball — nuzzles his ear in worry. Looking down through vision that has blurred from an onslaught of tears, Ash finds Pikachu standing on his lap, tiny paws holding both sides of Ash's face and crying out for his attention. With a shaking hand, Ash pets Pikachu's head while tilting his other hand to look at Misty, who he realizes on a delay has been yelling his name through the screen of his Pokégear.

"M-Misty, I just saw—" he swallows a painful lump in his throat, "Mewtwo fell from the sky!" His heart is beating so wildly that it would scare him if he could focus on it. "They were unconscious! We... we're too late..."

Misty stops running now, a tree behind her proving this by appearing suddenly motionless. Tears spring into her eyes, and her jaw tightens in pain. "Please, no..." she whispers, and then covers her face with her free hand. He can hear her struggling not to cry.

Using Charizard's arm for support, Ash shakily stands from the floor. As he does so, Pikachu climbs up his arm to curl around the back of his neck, mewling sadly. On the TV now, the news broadcast is only static, until replaced a moment later by a plain, colorless image of the news station's name and trademark symbol.

"I heard their voice," Ash whispers, his mouth dry and his hands cold from the shock of sudden loss. "It wasn't in anybody's head. It couldn't have been Mewtwo's fault. There's… there's no way Mewtwo would... would ever... but... but they're going to be blamed for this anyway."

Through Ash's Pokégear, Misty chokes out a mournful sound that is almost a word, but not quite. Lowering her hand from her face, she licks her lips and tries again, saying, "They're — whatever happened, we should — we should still go. We're some of the only people who knew Mewtwo at all, and, and, people listen to us. Maybe we could try to —"

The TV across the room flickers, changing from the motionless image of the news station's name and symbol to a ground level view of Ryme City, still smoking from the damage it has accrued. Misty keeps talking through Ash's Pokégear, but once again Ash can barely hear her. Numbly, Ash pushes away from Charizard and heads closer to the TV, his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

The returning live broadcast is shaky and unfocused, the camera operator apparently struggling to zoom in to what they are seeing, as though they are having trouble remembering how to use their hands. After some stumbling readjustments, the camera operator has stabilized just enough to see how, a great distance away, a tiny, purple speck is hovering a few meters above the ground. Ash's arms rush with the tingle of goosebumps, and he swears he can smell the smoke filling the screen, toxic and burning in his lungs.

One more focus adjustment reveals a few pixels more of what seems to be a slim body, floating in quiet tension. There is at least one more figure standing on the ground below who is looking up at the pixelated, slim purple body without any trace of fear, both of them way too far away to be heard. Perhaps it's only experience that lets Ash realize the two points atop the head of the figure on the ground are the ears of a Pikachu, and then to recognize the flick of floating, dark purple pixels above them as the uneasy motion of a long tail.

Ash's heart tumbles into his stomach on a wave of relief and confusion as the few visible, blurry pixels of the floating figure rise higher into the air. As they do, electrical distortion surges across the live broadcast's already-fuzzy video feed, only to clear as the figure zooms away.

As the figure recedes from view on the TV, Ash gasps from a flash of pain between his ears, a bladed agony of something wedging against his scalp and shooting needles into his brain, invasive and pressuring his own mind into a quieter state. It's like there's metal clamped around his head, and he feels he _must seek a way to be free of this_. The lightning bolt of a headache is joined by distorted, visual flashes of a city seen from the clouds above it. Alarmed at this sight that is not his own, Ash braces his hands on the edges of the bed, trying to ground himself.

 _I should have known,_ a soft thought, like the whisper of a ghost, trickles into Ash's consciousness. The dizzy pressure and the acidic scent of smoke fade away, but in their place, Ash is left with an echo of fear and pain so profound it makes his lungs ache when he tries to breathe. He no longer sees the city from above, but knows he was glimpsing a flight path to escape.

"Mewtwo," Ash whispers, mostly to himself. Becoming aware again of Misty's voice, begging him to answer her, Ash says, "Misty, listen, I think Mewtwo actually made it! They had to. I... I can sense it... somehow."

"Ash," Misty says, her voice very, very quiet over Ash's Pokégear, yet building in insistency with every word, "You said they fell."

Ash realizes Misty might not be in front of a TV like he is, so he swallows back the echo of someone else's pain, as well as his own, and he reports, "I can't explain it, but the news showed a figure, too far away to really see, and it... it flew away. Like Mewtwo would. And when it did, I started feeling... a weird kind of pressure."

"A weird pressure?" Misty somehow managed to sound both relieved and alarmed at the same time. "Ash, what do you mean? Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Ash shakes his head, as if to clear it, "but I've got a really bad feeling Mewtwo's doing worse than I am." Still trying to sort out what's going on in his head, he watches the live TV broadcast, which now seems devoid of obvious direction, simply a camera sweeping across sights of people and Pokémon helping each other up from the ground and aready starting to clear up debris. "And... and the other Pokémon in Ryme City seem like they've stopped fighting, too. It's — it's calmer there now. Something changed. I don't know what."

"Ash," Misty says, quietly, "Mewtwo wouldn't have done this for no reason. I guess... maybe that reason stopped?"

"What if it happens again?" Upon feeling an additional, overwhelming flood of despair and isolation that seems to come from nowhere, Ash pulls Pikachu off of his lap and into a tight hug, needing the comfort. Taking a calming breath, he tries to focus on the feeling of Pikachu nuzzling his cheek and continues, "How soon do you think you can get to Ryme City?"

Misty seems to gather her thoughts, calculating, then says, "Maybe tomorrow afternoon? But I think Brock's closer. I know he's coming, too. I already talked to him. He's bringing medical supplies."

Ash is so grateful that Brock persued his dream of becoming a Pokémon Doctor, knowing that he's become a very good one. If medical care ends up being needed, he's doubtful Mewtwo would ever willfully go to a Pokécenter, no matter how badly injured they might be. Ash feels that unnerving surge of someone else's isolation building again in him, and he blurts out, "I know it's a bad situation, but... I'm really glad you're here, Misty. Thanks for calling."

Misty's expression softens, maybe noticing Ash's distress even through a tiny little screen. "It'll be okay. Our friend's still alive, and that's a good start. We'll figure it out, just like we always have."

"Yeah, I know we will. We have to." Scratching Pikachu's chin for comfort, he watches as the TV switches from a live feed of Ryme City to a replay of what has been happening, with a reporter's voiceover that sounds like they have no new information at all, just regurgitating a summary of what Ash has already seen. Maybe later there will be more to find out, but for now, there's nothing to gain from watching this.

This time, Ash remembers to turn off the TV as he leaves the room to meet up with Charizard, who is too big to comfortably fit indoors, and so has been standing with just their head ducking into the doorway. Climbing up with Pikachu onto Charizard's back, Ash says to Misty, "I'll meet you guys at the Pokécenter."

"If you get there first, don't wait for me — just, if you think you can, let Nurse Joy know where you're going so that we can follow?" Misty sucks in a breath, then looks to the side, as though deciding what path she's going to take next. Mournfully, she sighs, "Oh, Ash... Mewtwo's already been through so much. Now this? I hope they'll be okay."

"Well, even if they're not, they'll still have us." Distracted by the occasional flash of sky imagery through his mind, Ash has given up on keeping eye contact with Misty, but she doesn't seem bothered by it, so long as she can still hear him. "That's something, right?"

Softly, Misty says, "There's really no way to guess what's needed until we're there... We still don't even know what really happened."

As Charizard steps into the parking lot to find a clear space to takeoff from, Ash wonders what kinds of horrors could force Mewtwo away from a peaceful, secluded existence and into a berserker, very public and seemingly out of control, violent rampage. Worse, a few of the possibilities Ash is imagining start to seem unnervingly specific, triggering ghostly sensations of pain across his skin: tight feelings like restraints, sharp feelings like needles, and a couple things that feel far, far worse.

The terror that accompanies those thoughts is enough to make breathing more difficult, and so Ash hunches over to hold onto the sides of Charizard's neck more carefully, in case he stops being able to concentrate enough later to do so. On his shoulder, Pikachu makes a worried sound, which Ash tries to soothe away with a gentle shushing noise. Pikachu does not seem convinced, but seems to realize it's not the right time to push the issue.

"Hey, Misty?" Ash says, "I'll contact you when I'm close to Ryme City, okay?" On Misty's answering nod and request for Ash to be careful, Ash says the same to her, ends the call, and then takes a deep, painful breath of the chilled mountain air around him.

Deep between Ash's lungs, a flickering, savage fear has begun to beat in tune with Ash's heart, and he feels the echoey panic of one word — _unsafe_ — claw repeatedly at his insides, as clear and present a presence as Pikachu is on his shoulder and Charizard is under his hands.

If this is Mewtwo's doing, Ash wonders if Mewtwo even knows it's happening, or if they're too hurt to be able to fully stem what they're projecting outwards. None of these feelings seem conversational in the way Mewtwo's voice when psychically projected would be, only emotionally and physically overwhelming beyond the ability to fully contain. It's possible Ash is simply having trouble keeping up with his own emotions, but... as these feelings of imagined horrors ghost over his skin in little flickers of pain, entrapment, or worse, Ash is becoming increasingly unconvinced of this.

Below him, Charizard whuffs out a firey breath of concern, to which Ash pats the leathery orange skin of their shoulder and answers by simply saying, "Hey, buddy, can you please make sure I don't fall off while you're flying?"

If this request from someone who's been riding on their back through times of flight for nearly two decades alarms Charizard, they don't show it. They only charge forward, gathering power to accelerate into a strong takeoff.

With Ash supporting Pikachu over his shoulder through the initial jolt of Charizard taking flight into the air, they become skybound together, heading into the clouds on their way to try to find and help a friend in grave need.

* * *

(TBC)

2019/07/16


	2. Psychic Residue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash and Brock meet up in Ryme City, where a strange epidemic is spreading that may be linked to the harm Mewtwo has endured. Meanwhile, Misty finds a reporter who might be willing to help them find where their injured friend has gone to recover.

* * *

Ryme City is chaotic when Charizard touches down a short distance away from the Pokémon center, landing in a rush of wind and flying paper on a road that has been closed to clear up debris. Before them is a cluster of flustered Chanseys, as well as a group of both people and Pokémon who the Chanseys are helping line up on the sidewalk to enter the building. It's been nearly a full day since Mewtwo went on a rampage through the city, and no one Ash can see on the sidewalk looks terribly injured, which is why he imagines they're not already inside the building.

Battling a headache that's been pounding behind his eyes for the past few hours of flight, Ash keeps his cap pulled low as he slides down from Charizard's back, figuring that this will both help his headache feel better _and_ keep him somewhat concealed. However, he knows the years have made him a fairly recognizable figure. As such, he's not entirely surprised when a single gasp from the nearby crowd turns into multiple shouts, and then several people are abandoning their place in line to rush towards him. Before they can get close, Charizard headbutts Ash in the back, activating his own Pokéball to be sucked inside of it before anyone can even have a chance to start petting him.

Pikachu, who had been sleeping on Charizard's back, awakens with a squeal of shock as Charizard disappears from beneath him, but Ash catches Pikachu easily before turning to face the incoming crowd.

"Oh!" Ash cries, pushing his cap up to see them better as he realizes keeping his eyes hidden is now futile. Even though his head is hurting a great deal, he holds up a hand, palm-out, and tries to give everyone he sees a bright smile. "Hello! Excuse me, how's everybody doing? Are you all okay?" Though listening to them, he leans his shoulder forward to keep moving through the crowd as he is hounded with questions about what he's doing here, and if he's participating in any battles, and if so, where? "I'm just here for a friend, sorry, excuse me. Excuse me, please." He locates the head nurse Chansey, wearing a red-striped, white cap atop their head, and says, "I'm looking for Dr. Brock?"

The Chansey seems mildly stressed, but perhaps has already been informed that Ash is on the way, for the Chansey only nods, says, " _Chan_ -sey!" and gestures for Ash to follow as they waddle quickly towards the building. The other Chanseys, meanwhile, gather behind Ash to prevent anyone else from entering the Pokécenter after him, keeping them all in line. He hears disappointed yells for autographs, which makes him blush as he slips into place behind the head Chansey and walks through the sliding glass doors of the Pokécenter.

"Chan-seeeey?" The Chansey asks, while pointing to their own head, and Ash realizes the way he has his palm pressed to his head is being mirrored. The bright lights in the Pokécenter are giving him and his headache some grief, as is the racket of dozens of chattering people and Pokémon in the waiting room.

"It's just a headache," he tells Chansey, "I'm okay, but thank you for asking me."

In his arms, Pikachu looks up at him, crooning, "Pikaaa" in worry. Ash pulls Pikachu closer to his chest in reply, and Pikachu snuggles under his jacket for warmth.

Lead through a set of swinging doors and then down a long, white hallway, Ash is brought to a back office, where Chansey slides a keycard through a metal slot that turns a red light on the door handle into a green one.

"Chansey!" The Pokémon gestures for Ash to open the now-unlocked door, revealing behind it a commotion of Pokémon doctors and nurses, all rushing to set up trays of miscellaneous medical treatments and carrying clipboards with hand-scribbled information all over them.

In the corner of the room nearest him, Ash spots Brock in his white coat at about the same time that Brock spots him.

"Hey! Ash! You're here!" Still setting up a metal tray containing many cups of medical treatments, Brock looks around, leaning slightly to the side to check behind Ash, "Where's Misty?"

"She's catching a ferry." Careful to stay out of the way of the people and Chanseys around him, Ash moves to stand closer to Brock. "Said she'd be here as soon as she can. What's been going on here, Brock? You sounded stressed when I called you to say I was almost here."

"We're having a problem," Brock replies, cryptically. "I don't know how to answer that yet." He points at Ash's cap and asks, insistently, "How's your head?"

Ash stands there, blinking, before answering in confusion, "It hurts a little, I guess, but I was flying for about twenty hours, Brock. It's pretty cold up in the sky."

Brock grits his teeth together and pulls something off of a metal tray to his left, scampering over to shine what Ash quickly realizes is a flashlight directly into his eyes.

"Hey!" Ash yelps, jolting back at the lance of pain this sends through his skull, "quit it! Brock, what are you doing?"

Not listening, Brock sweeps the flashlight to Ash's other eye, then as Ash is blinking rapidly from both the pain and the blurs of color now dancing across his vision, Brock leans down to do the same to Pikachu.

"Pi-kAAA!" Pikachu shrieks, startled, before ducking under Ash's jacket to hide from the light.

Brock pulls the flashlight away with a relieved sigh. "Both of your pupils are responding normally. Good! You must have enough tolerance for it."

"'It'?" Ash asks, incredulously. "What are we supposed to have a tolerance for?"

Brock puts a fist below his chin, thinking aloud, "It's _probably_ because we were all exposed to it before!"

"Brock! What were we exposed to?"

"Psychic residue."

_"_ Psychic _what_?"

"A projected effect of a damaged psychic Pokémon's mind," Brock says, while rushing back to his tray of potions, berries, and other treatments that Ash doesn't recognize. Gesturing for Ash to follow him as he rolls the cart the tray is on out of the room, which Ash does, Brock says, "What were you seeing on the way over? Images? Anything strange or out of place about them?"

Ash feels a chill run up his back. "This is about Mewtwo," he realizes. "They're hurt badly enough they can't stop themselves from projecting how it feels."

"I think you were already thinking that," Brock says. He's walking fast enough that Ash has to rush to keep up with him, the cart's wheels rattling loudly as they move through a crowded hall. "Lots of people here are getting flashes of images that have nothing to do with where they are. _Way_ too many people for it to be a coincidence. And almost everybody has the _same_ headache, except some are feeling it worse than others."

"You think maybe it's a proximity thing?" Ash frowns. "No, can't be, can it? I felt it really far away from here yesterday."

"The headache?" Brock looks alarmed. "It's reaching that far away?"

"Well… a different one, with other images and really bad feelings. I think I maybe even heard talking. The kind of headache I have now, I really only got when I started getting closer to here."

"It's like catching someone else's memories." Brock frowns. "Mewtwo _has_ said before that they could contact you, so maybe that channel was just already more ready for you to use."

"Mewtwo hardly ever used it," Ash says, feeling sad about this. Maybe if he'd stayed in better contact with his friend, none of this would have ever happened. Maybe Ash could've known something bad was happening to Mewtwo and prevented it instead.

At the closed doorway to a treatment room, Brock puts a hand on Ash's shoulder and says, comfortingly, "Mewtwo has always been a bit of a loner. This isn't your fault, Ash. You couldn't have known what was happening." He turns to push open the door behind him, revealing a long bed with a sleeping Ekans and their trainer beside it. "Stay here for a minute. I'll be right back."

The door closes in Ash's face, and Ash, feeling deflated, leans his back against the wall and closes his eyes to more carefully listen to the pain in his head. It seems at its worst above his ears and around the back of his head, like some kind of rounded vise clutching at the back of his skull. This… is Mewtwo's pain? Or worse, only an echo of it. It could be so much worse at the source. Ash's heart clenches in his chest.

"Do you feel that, too, Pikachu?" he says to the huddled yellow ball of fur that's still trying to hide inside his jacket.

Pikachu looks up at Ash. "Pi-k _aaa_ ," it says sadly.

Ash sighs painfully. He tries to remember the most recent flashes of imagery he's been seeing, remembers blurry, slatted lights, a pile of fabric, and looking blearily at the word _Sinnoh_ on a wall, even though Ash's gut tells him the location doesn't match the word.

The door beside him opens and Brock comes back out with his cart of medical supplies, already moving in another direction. Ash follows immediately as Brock, in line with what Ash is already thinking, says, "I think it's important we figure out where the images are coming from before anybody else does. _Really_ important, Ash. Most people think they're just having weird headaches from the purple gas they breathed in, but Mewtwo caused a lot of damage to people and things they care about, and—"

"It wasn't Mewtwo," Ash snaps, with a surprising amount of irritation. He takes a breath to calm down, reminding himself that Brock will believe him when he says, "On the news, it didn't sound like Mewtwo. I know they've changed their voice a couple times, but they don't actually _talk_. And they were talking _a lot._ " He swallows, "Besides, they wouldn't try to hurt people like what happened here. I _know_ that."

Brock gives him a strong, considering look. Mostly, there's agreement in his expression, but Ash thinks he sees something more there, too. They've talked before about shared dreams they've both had but could never find the source for, dreams about running in helpless terror in a stadium where Mewtwo hovered with glowing eyes above them, engulfed in flames and surrounded by menacing, dark orbs as screams echoed all around them, but this doesn't line up with anything they know of Mewtwo now.

"I think," Brock says, after a pause, "whatever happened before, people are a lot more likely now to want to hurt Mewtwo than Mewtwo is to ever want to hurt anybody else. I thought that as soon as I saw the news, and I still think it."

"You have any idea where Mewtwo might be?"

Outside another treatment room, Brock pauses with his hand against the door handle. "I keep seeing blankets on a wood floor, so… maybe with somebody who cares about them?"

Ash's heart sinks into his stomach. "I don't think Mewtwo lets a lot of people care about them."

Brock frowns, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he swallows, pushes the door open behind him, and says before he closes it, "I guess we have to hope that's changed."

* * *

As Brock finishes the caretaking rounds he's taken on while visiting the Ryme City Pokécenter, Ash finds a working computer terminal in the break room and starts replaying footage of Mewtwo's apparent rampage. All the while, Ash's head is pounding, which he's starting to recognize through observation is the state of nearly everybody else here, too. Squinting through the pain, he reads about the purple smog that had practically engulfed Ryme City, as well as the madness and hysteria that had followed it, and then the forced fusing of Pokémon bodies with nearby humans.

"I can't even imagine us being the same person, Pikachu," he says to his best friend, whose ears are twitching up and down as they sit on his lap to watch recorded footage of another Pikachu leaping on top of rooftops and parade balloons, and then eventually plummeting from the sky alongside an unconscious Mewtwo. "It doesn't seem as fun to know somebody's only sticking around with you because they don't have a say in it, you know? I like us being separate. It means I know you're here because you want to be!"

" _Chuuu_ ," Pikachu agrees. Like Ash, Pikachu has been responding negatively to bright lights, so he's hiding under the shadow of Ash's arms as Ash tries to figure out who might be willing to take Mewtwo into their care, if _anyone_ was willing to do that at all. Ash is still getting occasional, confusing visual flashes, but he has the unsettling feeling that Mewtwo must be asleep, for the flashes don't make any kind of rational sense anymore, mostly conveying blunt emotion, fear, and pain, rather than any actual images that Ash can critically analyze.

Two hours into Ash's increasingly worried and frantic research, with the pain in his head remaining constant and untouchable the entire time, he hears the chirp of his Pokégear on his wrist, and lifts his hand to see Misty's face light up the screen.

"Ash!" she cries, her eyes afraid, but also somewhat relieved, "I'm here, and I know where to go!"

Ash jolts up from his chair, energy surging through him. Pikachu clings to his shirt as Ash says, "You do? How? I've been watching news videos for hours, trying to figure it out!"

"Oh, Ash," Misty says, once again speaking with two moods simultaneously: this time, both fondness and exasperation, "you always have to overcomplicate things. I just found the number of one of the reporters who was there when it all happened. All I ended up having to do was call and ask what she knew. Once she knew who I was and what I wanted, it was easy."

Squeezing his eyes shut, Ash rides the waves of feeling pretty stupid, but also being glad for Misty's perpetual practicality when he's too strung up on other things to focus properly. His not having slept for over 24 hours probably isn't helping, either.

"Okay." He reaches for a piece of paper and a pen that's attached to the wall by a thin, silver chain. "So, uh, Misty, where are we going?"

She gives him an address, as well as, unexpectedly, a list of medical problems, which Ash jots down with a steadily sinking, gut-wrenching feeling of dread. Taking a deep breath at the end of what seems to be a long list of evidence for prolonged medical torture and neglect, he stares at the blank wall across from him, his _own_ imagination flashing images through his head that he really doesn't feel good about. Suddenly, a lot of the sense memories he's been experiencing make too much sense.

"I'll… I'll tell Brock," Ash says. "He'll figure out what we need to bring."

Misty silently regards Ash with a sad look through the tiny screen of his Pokégear, then says, quietly, "I think Lucy was relieved somebody called who seemed to actually care. She seemed a bit overwhelmed. Nobody knew at first, but it apparently took a lot out of Mewtwo to fix everything."

Ash thinks of the static on the news broadcast after Mewtwo had narrowly avoided falling to death, wondering just how far the psionic energy of their powers had needed to stretch beyond themselves to reverse as much of the damage around them as they could. Or, at the very least, enough to safely separate every single human and Pokémon in the city that had been forcibly fused, as well as to calm them all down from whatever berserker mania had surged through them as a result of the poisonous purple smog that the city had been filled with, but which is now seemingly absent. Ash thinks of having to repair the entire population of a city within mere seconds of being injured enough to pass out and lose total control of one's body. Perhaps it's little wonder seemingly everybody in Ryme City has a headache from absorbing the projected pain of a psychic Pokémon too injured to contain the contents of their mind.

"Please hurry," Misty says, but she hadn't needed to ask that at all. Ash is already rushing out of the Pokécenter's break room, looking to find Brock so that they can all go help their friend.

Now that he has some idea of what Mewtwo might have actually gone through, Ash feels a deep fear that is all his own, and so he runs like there are wings attached to his feet.

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2019.07.20

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**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments if you like this! They help me know if I'm hitting the right emotional notes, and also help me feel like my words matter. Thank you! 💙


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